“He’s not a loser,” Meg says. “He’s on the wrestling team at school.”
“Wrestling?” I think of those guys on Friday Night Smackdown. But when Meg gives me a dirty look, I say, “Yeah, wrestling. State champ, hundred-sixty-five-pound division.” I have no idea if there’s a hundred-sixty-five-pound division. What am I talking about?
“Hundred-sixty-five-pound division, eh?” Wendell says.
“They call him David because he fights guys bigger than him, like David and Goliath in the Bible,” Meg says. “Once, he stopped the football team from beating up a freshman.”
“The football team?” Wendell looks at me with new respect. “He fought the whole football team, the linebacker and everything?”
“Yup.” I’m getting into this now. Teach this guy to call me a loser. I’m a hero—of biblical proportions. “One guy weighed over three hundred pounds. I had him begging for mercy.”
“So you can fight giants?” Wendell’s practically jumping up and down now.
“Giants?” Sure. Whatever. “If there were giants, I could probably fight them. I’m a hero, after all.”
“So, can we have the frog now?” Meg says.
“I have money,” I add, “so name your price for the frog.”
Wendell stares out the window.
“Wendell?” Meg says. “Your price?”
“Yeah.” I reach for my backpack. “A grand for a frog is fair.”
Nothing.
“Wendell?” Meg waves her hand in front of his face. “Johnny wants to give you money for the frog.”
“Money? Oh, I don’t want money.” Back to the window.
What’s this guy’s problem? But then, I think I know. “We promise not to release him. No siree. This frog’s going right back to Aloria. In fact, he’s human. Humans can’t be a nonnative species, can they?”
“That’s not it.” Wendell walks away from the window and starts rummaging through his desk. I want that frog. Who knows if he’s even feeding him right, if he has enough air. Prince Philippe could be starving to death because he refuses to eat bugs.
Wendell pulls a pair of binoculars from his desk. He walks back to the window and starts looking through them like he’s trying to locate something, Finally, he gestures to me. “Look.”
I peer through them. Grass. Tall grass. And sand. In the sand is a big hole. A Key deer sniffs around it, looking for water.
“So? It’s a hole?”
“Look around the edges,” Wendell says.
Now I see that the hole has an elongated shape, like a foot. And at the end of the foot . . . toes! It’s a footprint. A footprint almost as big as a Key deer. Who would have such a big foot?
Wendell reads my thoughts. “We’ve been beset by giants.”
“Um . . . giants?”
“Yes, giants. Plagued by giants, two of them, which is two too many. That’s what’s eating the deer, and no one—not the EPA, the Monroe County police, the Sierra Club, or the National Guard—believe me.”
I glance at the footprint again. Giants. There’s no such thing. And then, I remember my mother telling me a legend about a giant in the Florida Keys, like the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness Monster. I never believed it, of course. But back then, I didn’t believe in witches or talking animals or magic cloaks either.
“You believe me, don’t you?” Ranger Wendell says.
I nod.
“And I know you can help me. You can kill them.”
“Sure, I can . . . what?” I tear my eyes away from the binoculars and stare at him.
“What?” Meg says at the same time.
“You can kill giants.” Wendell’s all happy, smiling now. “You’re young. You’re strong. You were chosen by the princess to accomplish her quest. You have experience defeating the mighty, so I know you can help me with my little, er, giant problem.”
“But . . .”
“Kill the giants, and you get the frog. Otherwise, I put him on eBay, and I won’t sell him to you.”
“That may be against eBay policy,” I tell him. “You could get banned.”
“Think I care if I get banned from eBay?”
And then he starts to cry again.
Between sobs, he says, “If I don’t do something about these giants, all the deer will die, and I’ll be responsible.”
Meg reaches over and pats his back. I look at her, incredulous. “Have you tried showing photos of the footprints to the EPA?” she asks. “Or photos of the giants?”
He nods. “They all think they’re fake, like the Loch Ness photo.” He opens his desk and pulls out two photos. They’re blurry, and the giants are mostly obscured by trees. They do look fake. “People have been spreading rumors about giants in Florida for years. Skunk apes, they’re called. No one believes it. If I push it, I could lose my job.”
They say you shouldn’t judge a man unless you’ve walked a mile in his shoes. I glance down at Wendell’s shoes, no-name hiking boots so worn down I wouldn’t want to walk a step in them. This man has a giant problem.
I hear Meg saying, “We need to see the frog if we’re even going to think about fighting the giants.”
Wendell raises his tear-stained face. “I have him right here.” He walks over to a tank that has a bunch of toads and frogs. He reaches in, takes out a wet, croaking frog not nearly as big as the one I saw on Key Largo. “Meet the Alorius marinus.”
The frog pees on his hand. He doesn’t wince.
It has a reddish orange spot and the family birthmark. It’s the prince. No doubt about it. But Wendell holds it away from me. If I could just grab it . . . I pull my backpack up and out from my shoulders, intent on getting the cloak. If I can get the cloak and the frog, and . . .
Meg. I need to get Meg too.
In that one second of hesitation, Wendell sees what I’m thinking. “Oh no, you don’t.” He pulls away the frog. “Trying to take it, were you?”
“He was just trying to get this.” Meg holds up the earbuds.
“Headphones?” Wendell clutches the frog so tightly I worry he’ll crush him. “Unlikely.”
“These are special ones that let me talk to him—if he’s the right frog. Try them.”
Wendell tries, using only one hand, to get the earbuds in his ears. I don’t offer to help. I have the cloak now, Meg poised beside me. If Wendell drops the frog, we grab it.
He doesn’t though. He gets the earbuds in, then looks at me. “Now what?”
“Say hello. See if he understands you.”
Wendell tilts his head toward the frog. “Hey, little guy. How goes it? Flies good?”
The frog lets out a massive croak that blows back Wendell’s hair and causes us all to jump. Wendell pulls out the earbuds.
“What’d he say?” I ask.
“He called me a not very nice name.”
“He doesn’t like being held captive. You should give him to me.”
“He doesn’t like the food here, and I’ll give him to you when you kill those giants.”
I hold out my hand. “Let me talk to him.”